Travel On The Good – Going. Going. Great.

Traveling in Africa is expensive. Going on safari is really expensive. A medium-priced camp is $200 to $300 a day and expensive camps can easily charge $500 or $1,000. Per person. Per day.

Traveling at that level of expense adds up fast. Just imagine what it is for a family of four for a week or for two couples. It’s a lot of money.

There’s a reason for that, of course. It’s very expensive to operate even a small camp in say, the Busanga Plains in Zambia, where this picture was taken.

The camp is more than a ten hour drive from the nearest outpost. It’s under water for a good part of the year and yet, the operators have to host tourists from around the world who are looking for a first-rate safari experience.

However, we also know something else about Africa. There are a lot of amazing groups doing amazing work on the ground there. People like Happy Africa Foundation who are doing everything from buying toothbrushes to protecting wildlife to building schools.

Or there is the group that created the Naboisho Conservancy – extending the reach of the Mara National Park in Kenya by a critical 55,000 acres by working with and allowing the Masai who have lived there for centuries to stay in their villages.

These groups are trying to raise even just a few thousand dollars for critical projects, like providing a basic school to young children or even supplies to people when natural disaster strikes. Surely there must be a way that some of that money that was arriving with the tourists could be channeled to the groups that are trying to help and preserve exactly what the tourists were paying all that money to see?

It took us a bit but we figured it out and there are three really important parts of it.

We know Africa and we can send you on the best possible trip – whether you want to spend a little or a lot. From basic trips to remarkable customized journeys, we will make sure that your experience is even better than you imagined.

How do we do this?

Well, our trips are planned and executed not by a travel agent here but by our team in Cape Town, South Africa who know the continent inside and out.

Second, you’re not going to pay a penny more by traveling with us.

In fact, you just might pay less. We negotiate more than competitive rates with the camps themselves. We are also willing to accept less commission than most travel companies, because –

Three, every single night you spend in Africa, part of the money that you are spending will end with groups working in the area you are visiting.

So if you want to go see the annual migration in the Mara National Park, you can stay at the wonderful Encounter Mara camp, and you’ll pay the same amount you would no matter who you booked it with, but a portion of the proceeds will benefit the Naboisho Conservancy and right now, their need to increase the number of rangers that are out on anti-poaching patrols.

If you’re thinking to yourself, wait, if it’s the same camps and the same prices and the same safaris, well, then why wouldn’t I travel on the good so that I know that more money is staying in Africa? That’s exactly our point.

We’ll be posting some travel specials starting next week. Right now we are also offering people the chance to plan their own trip, just email us at james@travelonthegood.com if you are interested in learning more.